


Lessons Not Quite Learned

by Syberina5



Series: Experience, the Daughter of Fools [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost Girl, Veronica Mars (Movie 2014), Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 07:39:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5489093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syberina5/pseuds/Syberina5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a receptacle for bits and pieces of lessons that I have considered and discarded for the <i>Experience, the Daughter of Fools</i> series for varying reasons.  I decided to share them anyway in the interest of plot bunny amnesty. They are not well edited and other fandoms listed are not crossovers, but crackish comparisons. Chapter added 3/24/2016.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story happened while I was devouring the back series and waiting anxiously to see season 5 of _Lost Girl_. I am still waiting (Come on, Netlflix) but I recognize that this fun bit of crack really doesn't jive with the character development. Enjoy it for what it is (my brain drawing connections between characters and arcs). Also, I cannot promise that there won't be a Kenzi cameo eventually in _Daughter_. 
> 
> PS-No season 5 spoilers please!  
> PPS-If you have never seen the show, this won't make as much sense to you.

Lesson #: adorable only gets you out of so many jams

I was just taking the dishes from him, smirk and snarky comment about him doing them being beneficial for his hands--Palmolive was likely mentioned--when the doorbell rang. I opened it with the still novel domestic glow on my cheeks to Mac and Wallace who were entirely too excited to be at my tiny apartment of an evening.

“Lady friend, we have got wine and ice cream and--”

“And all the party Juju you can stand because FedoraWallace is coming back from the dead tonight.”

“I keep telling him,” Mac returned, “that that isn’t happening until at least mid season when they have Kenzi back.” She sighed.

“He’s a fool,” I agreed, “but he’s a loyal fool,” still a little confused. “But.. what…?”

“Logan,” Wallace chirped, the happiest he’d been to see him since the great Piz incident of 2007, “are you prepared to be hit by the Morrigan?”

“Ummm, guys?” This was basically a friend and girlfriend fail in one giant ball of whoops.

“Veronica…” Mac moaned along with Wallace’s incredulous, “Seriously?”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been a tad distracted,” I made eyebrows in Logan’s clearly befuddled and almost bemused direction (he’d only been back a week, okay? We still had a lot of catching up to do).

Some comment about lauren=Piz, V was supposed to fix it so Logan was on guy time with Dick. Veronica says she was working that angle but. Dick enters and is clearly ready to join the watch party (Aw, yeah, time for some succubitch) all about team lauren/women and logan feels left out and dips. V makes joke about being the Lauren realizes he’s actually upset. Goes out to talk to him to discover he is having some culture shock (maybe people don’t need me here and I should go back to the navy). She climbs up on the hood of his car (relax, jeggings)and they talk/make out before going back in.


	2. Chapter 2

Lesson #: when you really love someone, you know

Logan shot down... Meryl wasn't as naive as I had thought she certainly wasn't as oblivious


	3. Chapter 3

Lesson #: compartmentalizing is the only way to survive a crisis.

boyfriend Duncan, stranger Duncan; Friend Logan, Foe Logan,

Lesson #: no matter how hard you try, how thick and tall you make the walls of the compartments, eventually the stuff in them will intermingle.

Friend Logan, Foe Logan, Frienimie Logan, the brief appearance of Fondling Logan and this strange, strange apparition Felonious Logan and the return of Fondling to Frienemie 

Lesson #: letting the compartment walls dissolve a little can be really relieving.

Logan meets his mini-me: an old friend of Veronica’s who likes weird nicknames, is an astrophysicist, and likes to act in a town where she can’t get a whole lot of gigs. Then he meets De and Matt.


	4. Chapter 4

Lesson #: television is sexy.

Curled up with him in bed has been one of the best ways to indulge my antisocial tendencies ever. Especially after he gets back from a deployment, training, or some kind of mission I’m not really supposed to know much about. He’s exhausted and snuggly and just likes to touch as much of me as possible and doze. It’s not like I lay there and stalker stare at him the whole time either. I do work. I sleep myself--catching up on what I miss while he’s gone, lonely and working to keep myself busy. I Netflix.

He’ll wake up watch an a scene, an episode, and drift back off with a nuzzle-nip-kiss to my shoulder. Sometimes there will be his chatty running commentary as he bids his time, slowly stealing my attention from whatever it is I’m doing until we are so wrapped up in each other that my laptop, my files, hit the floor with a thunk and I don’t notice enough to care because he’s touching me the way I need, the way I want, the way that we have to.

And because Logan Echolls is a sneaky little bastard.

***

“Hmm,” he hummed against my bare shoulder, rubbing his lips nascently back and forth over it. “I like her.”

“Why’s that?” I asked testing to see just how awake he was, how much of this show he’d picked up on during my late night rewatch to prepare for the coming season. 

“She’s a crime-fighting, spunky blonde--”

“She dyes it.”

“Doesn’t matter, still does it for me.”

“And it could be argued that she’s really sort of an accomplice to the crime fighting rather than the crime-fighter of note.”

“Ok, counselor, but she is way smarter than the crime-fighter of note who really just likes to beat things up with his fists or other representations of his enormous ego.”

“Hmm, right, because Navy pilots don’t have those at all.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“Shhh,” she patted his arm to quiet him, “shh… Here it comes.”

“What?”

“The obligatory shirtless workout scene.”

His mouth, already on me, opened, his teeth grazed my flesh lightly before sinking into it with tenderness, paired with the lithe, muscular body on screen’s rhythmic, skillful contortions to make me shiver.

“Really,” he said against my skin, a hand sliding up from my stomach to my breast and his leg slipping further between mine and he rolled the R far more than necessary.

“What can I say?” I ask turning into his hands, into his mouth. “Egotistical men with sweaty muscles and reformed anger management issues really do it for me.”

It’s the canary’s cry in the next episode that reminds both of us that it’s still playing and Logan, having recovered more from his orgasm than I, reaches down to pick up my laptop. Expecting him to turn it off and snuggle into the post-coital drowz with me, I zone back out until I realize his is counting on his fingers and watching the screen intently.

“What?”

“I think we should get you some librarian glasses.”

“ _What_?”

“You two might actually be the same person and I am perfectly fine with the glasses look. Could be hot. Seriously hot.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

He put his hands up in front of my face and counted out on one with the other: “Fe-lic-i-ty-Smoak. Ver-on-i-ca-Mars.”

I chuckled and looked up into his face. He was thinking again. 

“Wait. Buff-y-Sum-mers. Nope. Damn.”

“You watched _Buffy_?”

“She was hot. Like I said, spunky, crime-fighting blondes really do it for me.”

“Hmm, I was really more of an Angel fan. You know,” I said, slipping a hand into the hair at his nape, sliding with the other around his arms down his chest, “with the angst and overly-gelled hair.”

He laughed, “Hey, my hair was perfect. Frosted tips were the bomb”

“Very Sugar-Ray of you Justin, yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is turning into the VM version of my Fan Boy 'Verse. #sorrynotsorry


	5. Lesson #1,189: sex is not a magic bullet (full disclosure: I do not intend to say that sex is not a personalized blender one may order online or through an infomercial, though that is also true). [Full Version]

Lesson #1,189: sex is not a magic bullet (full disclosure: I do not intend to say that sex is not a personalized blender one may order online or through an infomercial, though that is also true).

Growing up in the sunshine riddled underbelly of the movie industry you see sex used as a weapon nearly constantly. Don't believe me, take a scroll through some of the most popular American TV shows. Give _Desperate Housewives_ a looksee. Acceptance and even expectation of women to use wiles (AKA their hot bods) to achieve their ends will be prolific. Perhaps it’s true everywhere, I don't know. I can only tell you it was very true among the glittering wives and girlfriends of Neptune, California.

It passed on to the next generation almost seamlessly. Lilly was the proud valkyrie of her sexuality and if she had lived I would have been more like her than not. As it was I learned to use that particular wiley weapon in the pursuit of truth—especially truth I was paid to unearth.

I was fully aware that I was using my pretty face and pert body to get information (sorry, Leo, not sorry) But I thought that was where I drew the line. I may have batted my eyes at a boyfriend or two but usually as a joke or to distract them while I stole food.

But it wasn't that. It was just that mine looked different than Lilly's, different than the coy and conniving expressions on television women. 

It was this idea that sex, that making love, had some magical properties. What exactly I thought those properties were, I'm not sure.

It wasn't even like I had a whole lot of evidence to support this general, almost subconscious, idea. I mean, Lilly's idea of magical sex was not having to get up to go the bathroom right after (UTIs are bad; pee as soon as you can walk again). Shortly after our weekly sessions of her telling me how awesome and gross sex was came to an abrupt halt I was raped. Top that off with the way I watched friends, classmates, parents, clients, what have you, treat sexual partners like Pokemon cards... it's easy to see that maybe I should have been as disenchanted with any possible extraordinary aspects of sex as I was with idea of fidelity in the general populace.

Nevertheless, I truly believed that Duncan and I were cemented once we began sleeping together (even in the face of Logan's flagrant sex-buddyism). With Logan I thought because it was he and I ( _we, us,_ ) the sex that was between us was somehow special, untouchable. But then Madison Sinclair struck again, and again, and again. I could not really wrap my mind around how he could have sex with her and not have had some emotional involvement, some kind of magic.

She wasn't a stranger, a celebrity collector, a peripheral, neutral entity we'd known before. It was Madison Sinclair. She'd dated Dick, she tried to steal every boyfriend I'd ever had. We _knew_ her, we'd been to her birthday parties, we'd played spin the bottle with her. We knew things about her paternity she didn't even know. So, how could it possibly be just sex between them?

And I never really dealt with that. I just walked away from Logan and the violation of my "Sex is special" ideals. 

I got so wrapped up in the sex dichotomy (it's either good because you love the person or awful because you're being assaulted) that it took a therapist to point it out in college (a degree that requires you to get therapy, crazy right?). Logically, it makes a lot of sense. My student-of-psychology brain found it intriguing and I set myself the asinine homework assignment of having a one night stand.

Worst idea ever.

***

“You are so bad at this.”

My head thunked onto the bar top. I was the worst. Everyone could tell. Strangers even.

“It’s not that hard, lady friend. You just pick one out—who is not actively being fondled—and look at him and say, ‘Hey you, wanna screw?’” 

She must have been directing this at some poor schlep nearby because I heard, “Yeah, okay,” over the general din.

“Ugh, no,” she said, while I moaned my desire to die at the floor. “Seriously,” she pulled my head from my arms, “seriously. Are you just not built for casual sex?” She looked at me and I could see the drunkenness of this almost-stranger. “Because I have been watching you and you are awful at this. Oh my God, that guy, Saturday, he was crying. What did you do to him? You looked like you wanted to give him a BJ in the worst way and then _tears_.”

“I… I may have explained that his ex-girlfriend wasn’t necessarily cheating on him…”

“What were you doing talking about his ex-girlfriend when all you should have been discussing was his stone hard cock?”

“Um…” said the male voice from before.

“ _No_ ,” she barked turning to point at the guy’s face with her checkered nails. “Ew. Guh. Help a sister out,” she said, turning to me.

“Perhaps this would be a good time to mention that I know how to break all the bones in the human hand.”

“Oh,” she gasped at me as the guy looked horrified and slunk away. “We are friends. Can you teach me that?”

I kind of looked at her like I thought she was crazy because, well….

“Too much?” She crinkled her nose at me. “Yeah, I kind of have that problem. But enough about me. Let’s talk about your problem because seriously? Seriously. If you are looking for a one night stand you are going about it all wrong. All wrong. _Oh_. You need emotionally attached sex, don’t you?”

“What,” I basically shrieked, the whole bar might have stopped to listen for a millisecond.

“No judgement. No, no judgement but let’s face it: Samantha Jones you are not, pumpkin pie.”

“I’m not food.”

“I’m hungry; the world is food when I am hungry.” She shook herself. “Needing to be emotionally attached to enjoy sex isn’t a bad thing or a good thing but it may just be _your_ thing. It’s cool, cucumber. You just need to know what you like and work it. Like the only sex advice mama mallomars ever gave me, ‘If you don’t really enjoy doing it, then it’s not worth the effort.’ She was talking about me playing the violin but she totally meant sex. She was a WASP, they’re like that.” 

I may have pounded whatever alcoholic beverage she had in front of her. In retrospect, something I should have known better than to do. The conversation however, felt like one I would need to be drunk for and my companion was certainly not going to miss it any time soon.

“However,” she drawled, “if you are looking for safe, secure, hassle-free way to see what floats your rootbeer. I may know a guy.”

“A pimp?”

“No, please. I did you not just see my easy-peasy-pudding-and-pie tutorial on how to pick up a free penis cake?”

“So… you’re the pimp?”

She smiled like she was taking pity on me. “No. I’m studying to be a sex therapist. I know all the nicest, highest functioning nymphomaniacs within a hundred miles of the San Andreas Fault.”

“Dr. Pimp, lovely to meet you.”

“Charmed...” she bowed slightly.

“Veronica.”

“Charmed, Veronica. Deandra,” she said, hand to her collarbone. “Now, are you a type kind of lady?”

“No,” this was humoring her. Mostly.

“Ehk, wrong. And for your lovely parting gift please accept this delicious man candy. So I’ve only been watching you the last few times you’ve been here but I can tell you, you have a type. Tall, kind of doofy, weird hair, really earnest eyes, and fucking edible smiles.” And I would have been pissed if I weren’t sorting through every guy I had ever been attracted to trying to figure out if that was true. “I bet I can pick out everyone in this bar you find attractive.” 

I looked around the bar. She’d win. Every guy I had looked at all night long fit that description. “No bet.”

“Smart girl. Now I offer a one time, drama free, safe meetup, not hook-up. You just come meet this guy I know with me for a bagel (coffee optional) and then we go from there. I can tell you from the outset that he’s not scary sexually and he knows which end of a clitoris is up. And he’s pretty flexible. He won’t ask you to pee on him or hit him but if there’s something you’d like to try he’s probably game.”

“But you’re not a pimp?”

“Shut up and give me your phone,” she said with an indulgent but self-mocking smile on her face.

God help me, I gave her my phone.

***

“Veronica,” she practically chirped when she waved me over. From the look on her face she was tired and hungover but still happy to be living on planet earth. I had spent most of my Saturday night in a library and I wasn’t feeling cheerful at all. There had to be drugs involved here, right?

I sat down and shook hands with a man who was older than both of us, well groomed and dressed but not in anything expensive or fancy (after a lifetime in Neptune, CA I could spot expensive or fancy under a thick layer of Casablancas ennui and neglect) though he did seem to still meet the doofy criteria.

“I’m Matt.”

“Veronica.”

And then it got awkward because I had no idea what else to say. I wasn’t even sure why I was there except that it seemed like a more productive way to continue on with my “research” or whatever this plan had become.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Deandra said eventually when I couldn’t make eye contact and had only been able to speak about the weather. “Matt, Veronica here is trying to explore some of her sexual side but is having difficulty finding a suitable partner.”

“What kind of exploring are you interested in?” Matt asked me directly rather than about me as Deandra was doing.

Once again though I could only stumble through sounds and half syllables and eventually just looked pleadingly at Deandra. 

“Right. So, from my conversations with her she is looking for something fairly tame and not really containing any emotional strings. From what I’ve seen she’s generally only been able to explore sexually in long term relationships and doesn’t really have any experience outside of them. I thought you might be a nice set of training wheels.”

“Ah,” he said and blushed as he peeked up at me. “Well, you seem like a nice young woman and I’d like to help you, but—and I say this only to be open and honest, not to hurt your feelings in any way—I am a bit worried about your lack of verbalization. In a sexual encounter there is a lot of non-verbal cueing that goes on between participants, but, as we’ve just met and that seems to give you some difficulty, I don’t know that we would have very much fun without the verbal aspect.”

“You kind of talk like a textbook, you know that right?” 

Matt and Deandra laugh and shared a look. “Better,” he said.

Just then a woman dropped of a platter of half a dozen different bagels and three kinds of cream cheese. “Thank _God_ ,” Deandra said, “I’m starving.”

And she must have been because I only got two bagels and Matt barely ate one but they were still gone by the time we left the table.

***

“So,” Deandra said, swaying her hip into mine as we walked.

“So, what? Are professors in the PhD track really this cool with sentence fragments? Because that is not fair.”

“Har har. No. Matt. So…”

I laughed, “You see everything as a challenge, don’t you?”

She made a moue, “Most things,” she admitted. “It has a tendency to make long term romantic entanglements a bit hairy.”

“Yeah,” I agreed flashing on Duncan part deux, Troy, Logan, Piz, Logan, my dad.

“Hmm. Women with a strong sense of competition struggle to find positive outlets for it in modern westernized societies. It usually gets channeled into micro-aggressions against other women—seen as acceptable behavior by most—or athletics—less available to us the older we grow. Understanding it doesn’t mean you can stop the instinct, or should even, and it doesn’t mean that the people around it don’t see it as confrontational or bitchy rather than mental acuity and engagement.”

“Is this why you hang out with Matt, so you can both sound like textbooks?”

“When you spend as much time reading them and helping professors write them it is really hard to turn off. Lucky for you you meet me when I was too drunk to speak textbook.”

“Yeah, lucky me.”

“Yes, lucky. Matt’s a good guy and he likes you as a person. Which, since he’s a good guy, isn’t that rare. But he also meet you through me which means he doesn’t have to be coy about his sexuality. Most people he meets are pretty uncomfortable when he starts being open about it with them but you were cool and…” she shrugged. “It’s always nice to meet cool people. 

“But that’s not the real question here,” she continued. “Do you find him attractive?”

“I—” I blushed and looked down. “I mean, kind of. He’s good looking and smart and not a jerk so yes, attractive.”

“Ha. Okay. But do you want in his pants?”

I blushed and stammered.

“That’s a yes. Do you want him in _your_ pants?”

“I— Academically, theoretically, hypothetically? Yes. Actually? I don’t know. I kind of feel like I should be the only one in my pants. They aren’t really big enough for other people to join me in them.”

“Alright. But, I would like to point out that there are plenty of ways someone else will fit in your pants with you still in them.”

It may have been a while but I could still remember a few of them.

“Also… okay, let’s try something.” She pulled me to a stop on a sidewalk near the south campus entrance. “Close your eyes. Think back to a time when you were with someone you found attractive sexually. You are in a situation in which both you and this person are comfortable. You are watching this person move and interact from a distance.” 

_We’d gone to the beach for the last bonfire of the summer, several weeks into classes. Logan and Mac, Wallace, Parker, even Piz was there and everyone was getting along. I had walked up the beach a bit to call Dad, let him know that I would be back later than expected, that it was too nice to come in and give into the end of summer. On my way back I saw Logan’s face in the firelight, smiling and happy, probably trying to draw Parker out of her cocoon or trying to convince Wallace they were friends for my sake._

_I’d stood there watching him for a minute, glad to see that we could still have this, these moments even after the last three years._

_And I had wanted to crawl into his lap and kiss him until we drowned. To feel his hands, warm from the fire and cool from the sand, on my skin and in my hair and—_

“How much do you want that person in your pants, Veronica?” I needed a cold shower.

“You’re evil,” I said, tossing a glare at her and continuing up the sidewalk towards my dorm.

She laughed, “It’s an adjective. Regardless, do you want Matt in your pants?”

“I guess so.” But not as much as my pants wanted Logan Echolls. It was a problem.

“Well, what’s stopping you?” _Besides memories?_

“I don’t know. It feels weird to just randomly agree to have sex with this guy I don’t know.”

“Fair. If it is security you are worried about there are some options. One, take a risk and be alone with a guy you don’t fully trust with the intent to both be naked. Two, have somebody you do know in the next room to help you feel more comfortable.”

“How would _that_ make anyone more comfortable?”

“Or three, don’t ever be sexually intimate with anyone.”

“That seems pretty extreme.”

“It is, but you seem like a bright girl, like a woman who knows that it is not only the strangers who pose a threat and if you take that to its logical conclusion you can’t trust anyone and if you can’t trust anyone, honeypot, you are going to spend a lot of time alone. Sexually or otherwise.”

“Well at least you don’t talk like Yoda.”

“Aw, thanks kumquat.” She ruffled my hair in the most patronizing way possible.

“How can you be hungry again already?”

“I am a miracle of the universe.”

***

“I can’t believe I agreed to this.”

“It’s really not that big a deal. Really all this is just a make-out sesh on a third party’s couch. Like you’ve never done that before.”

 _Yeah, just last time I was drugged._ “Yeah but you’ll be like… present and aware of what is going on.”

“Not, like, porn aware. This is not sexy time for me, lady. Look, is there something you aren’t telling me?”

“There are lots of things I’m not telling you.”

“Fair. Remember, you are not locked into making-out with anyone, certainly not Matt. If you guys are talking and you don’t want to kiss him, don’t kiss him. If he kisses you and you don’t want him to tell him no. This is not prostitution, there are no repercussions for what goes on here.

“Right.” There were always repercussions.

***

We were sitting on the couch and Deandra was at the kitchenette making tea and ignoring us, mostly. 

Matt’s “Can I kiss you?” brought what I had been thinking of as an increasingly less awkward conversation to a thundering halt.

“Um, sure, I guess.”

He kissed me on my cheek, “You’re very lovely, Veronica. Clever and honest and kind,” he kept his hand on my cheek and his thumb rubbed softly over it even as I turned to look at him. It had been a long time since anyone had called me kind. He smiled into my eyes and said, “You are,” and kissed me on my mouth.

It was gentle and smooth and I didn’t want to push him away so it continued. And after a while we were still kissing, laying on the couch and it still wasn’t enough. I wanted more. I pulled Matt closer and said, “More.”

“More of what?” He ran a hand down my back.

I looked into his open eyes, swallowed. “Harder.”

And so he kissed me harder and I pulled him closer and closer and kissed him back harder and harder until eventually I was pressed under him, panting, pulling at his clothes, pulling at my clothes, pulling at him.

Even as he was rocking into me later, pulling me tight against him, pressing me deep into the couch I found myself wishing we were on a firm mattress somewhere and scraped my fingernails across his scalp. He moaned and then took one of my hands from his hair and worked our fingers together across my clitoris as I came apart in ways I hadn’t in over a year.

He left my hand there as his traveled to my hips and ass, tilting to an angle I remembered. I tried to grunt my gratitude as his thrusts slowed and lengthened, became delicious rather than frenetic. Before long I was kissing him, one hand rubbing his neck and the other rubbing my clit. He pulled back and looked at me and laughed in a way that didn’t make me want to pull back and cover up. I took my hand from his hair and rubbed it down over his firm if not defined chest, over the muscles in his back, over his ass where he shivered. 

I raised an eyebrow at him and he smirked, his expression going towards bashful (something I learned long ago was possible during sex). I let my hand drift there, hoping to discover just what had made him shy, stroked the spot that had always helped Logan come during a blow job, squeezed a cheek the way Piz liked when we made out but it was the cleft between them that reproduced the shiver and a finger swirling there that had him groaning and angling back into my hand.

He came quickly, forehead collapsing on my shoulder, and my fingers had me following after. 

All too soon I was remembering that Deandra was probably somewhere nearby and had heard everything that had happened on her couch. As I was starting to feel self-conscious Matt, picked his head up and muttered, “Well, I was right.”

“About what, exactly,” I said crossing an arm over my breasts where they were exposed.

“You are clever,” he pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and draped it over my chest, “and honest and kind.” He kissed my cheek again and smiled. “And shy it would seem.”

I looked at him quizzically. 

“You know what you like in sexually, at least from things you have experienced before, and you are willing to venture into unknown territory with a partner but you’re shy  
and my guess dealing with new people is generally difficult for you.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

***

“So…” Deandra drawled, inviting as many details as would fit onto her double bed where we were curled up.

“Most one night stands aren’t like that, are they?”

“You mean as considerate and with a babysitter? No. But the calibre of sex runs the gamut and depends greatly on the people involved. But that’s not what I meant. How were the orgasms?”

“How do you know there was more than one?”

“You’re vocal.”

“Oh, sorry. I guess I have been told that before.”

“No judgement here. What else have you been told?”

“I’m a scratcher. And I guess I… mewl.” She looked at me sideways. “An ex called me a bobcat in bed because of the…”

“Ahh, got it. I once had an ex call me the terminator because my voice drops and I lead with my jaw.”

“Huh.”

And that was that for a while. But then, since De was one of my only friends at school, Matt started showing up when we hung out. Things were kind of strange, I could tell no one wanted things to be awkward but I watching Matt. Waiting for something even. 

Then one day I caught myself daydreaming in the library about sex with Matt in the stacks. It was an old memory turned fantasy but having someone besides Dawson or Logan starring in it was new, someone I’d slept with and still saw frequently.

I was still shaking myself out of it when I saw him, walking across the library. I waved, slightly shell shocked and he smiled back.

Later I ran into him in the 127s—shut up, Freud!—He reached around me for a book and I caught myself moving in to kiss him.

“Sorry,” I said, backing up. “That wasn’t—”

“It’s okay, Veronica. I’d like to kiss you again but I don’t want to confuse you about my intentions.”

“Oh, that can’t be good.”

He laughed, “It’s not bad. I’m just… anything between us would be casual and temporary and I don’t want to get involved if that’s not something you think you are equipped for.”

“I get that. I was only ever in one kind of causal relationship and he basically turned out to be using me so…”

“Which is an example of why I like to have this conversation with someone before it goes anywhere. It’s not a problem.”

I didn’t believe him. I mean, I really wanted to but I had never had sex without repercussions, I’d never been involved without repercussions. I had never gotten out of bed in the morning without repercussions. So for me it was only a matter of time until this thing I did and kind of regretted went kablooie and I regretted it a lot.

***

“Welcome to Professor De La Cruz’s Advanced Abnormal Psych” the board said in the loopy writing and swirls that screamed middle school aged TA. I eyed the TA handing out syllabi at the door, it was going to be a frustrating semester if he brought the same curling fonts to all his work.

I settled in and got my notebook ready for what was supposed to an incredibly rigorous course.

A couple minutes later the professor walked in and took over introducing the course from Corey the TA. and the landmine I knew was somewhere around here went kablooie as predicted.

I kept my cool and even took notes throughout the class but before long I was standing in front of what was apparently Matt’s desk with the heaviest glare I could muster.

“Hello, Veronica, how are you?”

“Enough with the polite. Why to the what now?”

He smiled, “I’m sorry, I’m not sure that was English.”

“I just…” I collapsed into a chair. “How did I not know I was in for this today?”

He shrugged. “Willful ignorance? You know I’m a professor here, you know I have worked with Deandra. You know my last name.”

“False. Actually. I think I didn’t.”

“Really?”

I wanted to bang my head on the desk, any desk, every desk. _All the desks_.

“I can see how this might be a surprise then but I don’t understand quite why it has you so upset.”

“Because we slept together and you’re my professor.”

“We slept together a year before I became your professor. In that time we have remained acquaintances and moved beyond our sexual encounter.”

“That’s fraternization and harassment and now I have to drop this class and pray I can get into one that will fill the requirement.”

“It isn’t and it would only be if I treated you differently because of our prior relationship, which I have no intention of doing or if I implied that your grade was somehow contingent on a continuation of said relationship, which it most certainly is not.”

I kind of needed to put my head between my knees, all I could see were Landry and Tim’s faces and the room had filled with the smell of dead bodies.

“Veronica? V?”

I felt Matt’s hand on the back of my head, I could tell he was worried but I was pretty sure that if I spoke I would puke on him.

“I’m calling De; hold on.”

A moment later he was putting a phone to my ear and I could hear Deandra talking me down.

“Hotdog,” I smiled, “what was that? Something about the rape crop up?” Our friendship had gotten a lot deeper in the year since we meet and she knew almost everything there was to know about me.

“No, just… I had this professor once who was having an affair with the dean’s wife and things… some people died and some people are in jail.”

“Okay, better now?” I looked up at Matt, his face was clearly his face, his hair didn’t look like a wig and the smell of the room was more like the lavender in the corner than eau de corpse.

“Yeah, sorry about that.” I hung up and handed Matt back his phone. “So not my most rational meeting with a professor ever.”

“You know you should talk to someone about those.”

“I appreciate the concern. They happen very rarely and I am. I make full use of my dozen free therapy sessions a school year.”

He smiled, “I bet you do. Are we okay here?” I guessed were were as okay as it was possible to be given that we’d had sex on De’s couch with her studying at a table that wasn’t even really in another room.

It was a fair assessment because the majority of the awkward was on my end. Listening to lectures I would flash to the sounds he had made, during an activity I would feel his breath on my neck and if he was gesturing sometimes I would think, _That hand has been inside me_ and then desperately want a shower.

“You are crap at this.” Deandra was right; I was crap at a lot of things. “You can not compartmentalize for shit.” She giggled. “Matt said sometimes your face goes from normal to white to red so quickly he has a hard time not laughing in class.”

“It’s not funny,” I glared.

“It’s hilarious. Thank God you decided casual sex wasn’t for you. Just imagine if there were four or five people on this campus you had that reaction to instead of just one.”

It’d be less horrifying than transferring back to the campus where I had a not-quite-sex tape, but only just.

“I am a master of disguise and avoidance. It was your insistence on Matt that caused it to be someone I can’t avoid.”

“Oh, V, really, Matt was a best case scenario. You really have to believe me.”

I’d learned that De was a big believer in her own use of casual sex for stress and pain relief. Have a headache? Call a fuck buddy for a quickie. Can’t focus on a paper, can’t fall asleep? That’s what masterbation is for! In the year that I’d known her she’d had more sex than I ever had. Meanwhile I had gone on 15 horrific first dates and three okay second dates and no third dates.

And had sex with my professor.

“V, seriously? Seriously the only people who have any idea are you, me, Matt, and anyone you confided in. Even if someone you told tells the Dean you have nothing to be ashamed of and you aren’t going to get expelled from Stanford or arrested.”

“I told no one.” Not Mac, certainly not Wallace and none of the few study buddies-turned pals that I had amassed during two years at Stanford.

“Well then no one knows.”

It would have all been fine if it had been left there. Eventually my course with Matt would have been over and I would have not had to look at him in almost-public for hours every week and we could have gone back to normal. Until. 

_Why is there always a fucking until?_

I was heading out of the law library where I had been doing some research for my final in Matt’s class when I saw him come out of a building nearby. Was actually raising my arm to get his attention—I was an overachiever, and I wanted my paper to be kickass—when I saw him turn back towards the building and smile as someone stepped from behind him and into the sunshine. He kissed her, not some usual friendly peck on the cheek but a full, deep kiss that promised more later before he dashed off across campus.

I was still standing there, arm half in the air staring at Deandra.

“ _What the fuck, De_ ,” I said with as little vitriol as I could when I had her cornered in her own kitchenette—I was so annoyed I didn’t even flash to how I had been naked on the couch six feet behind me.

“Veronica, I think you need to calm down.”

“I think you need to tell a little truth.”

“I am happy to fill you in on the recent change in my life but you need to take it down a notch and stop acting like I have committed a crime.”

I stepped back a couple of paces and took some deep breaths and tried to remind myself that this wasn’t Neptune and the likelihood that there was some sort of a conspiracy was fairly low. “Okay, okay, fine. Calming. Breathing. Downing a notch.”

“Good. Pickle?” She held out a plate full of them. 

I smiled and then had a thought I had not had since shortly after meeting De. “Are you pregnant?”

“Ha. No, but not because there hasn’t been opportunity.” She took the plate with her to her table.

“Gah, I wish you hadn’t said that.”

“You are like a teenager who can’t stand to see her parents be affectionate.”

“First of all I can almost drink legally and second neither of you is related to me, yuck. And thirdly, how long has this been going on?”

“I’ve known Matt since before I started my graduate work though he was never my professor. Somewhere after I started working as a research assistant in his office we had a flirtation. We were both interested but for certain reasons we decided we’d be better off not going down that path. Recently things have changed and we kind of found the path again”

“So this has been going on since before I came to Stanford?” She nodded. “Oh, my God, De how could you encourage me to sleep with him? You wanted him. Oh, good grief. And your face today, I saw you, you love him.”

“To be fair V, I was not in love with him—”

“You don’t even deny it?”

“—at that point we had both mutually agreed we were attracted but it couldn’t go anywhere else. Hence why both of us having other connections was important. I don’t like to pine.” She bit into the large pickle.

“But now you’re—”

“Yes. We’ve both worked through some of our issues and are giving this crazy thing called love a shot.”

“I just don’t understand how you can not be upset with him, or me, or somebody. I mean his penis was inside me right there.” I pointed at the couch like it could jump up and get on the witness stand.

But De just laughed. “Do you have any idea how many people have had sex on that couch?” I’d meet some of De’s other friends. My guess was a lot. “Do you have any idea how many different people I have had sex with on that couch? And do you know where Matt and I spent three hours cuddled up and holding hands last night when the TV wasn’t even on?” She sat still for a second trying to let that sink in. “We both acknowledge that we have had lives outside of each other and we both understand that everyone comes with a past. You can either hang on to the past like a weapon,” she looked at me pointedly, “to keep away whatever it is you are afraid of, or you can look at the future and enjoy the possibilities.”

This was something my therapist and I had been working on. Putting the past in it’s place and keeping it there. As a PI this is a handicap. You need the past in easily accessible places so you can use it to solve the puzzle, but as a regular human being it was more of a force field against moving on with your life. 

“I hope that is true for you guys,” I eventually said because in my experience it wasn’t. Families, marriages, relationships were all beaten and broken and lost because people ignored the past. 

“I know you do.”

I wish I could say that was that. But it was like remembering the way Logan and Lilly used to be only different. Seeing Matt and De together was nice because it was clear they loved each other and if the past ever crept up behind their eyes I never saw it. There were times I couldn’t stop wondering if De ever wondered if Matt still thought about kissing me or vice versa. 

I used to wonder that stuff about Logan. _How do I stack up against Lilly?_ I used to think. Was she better in bed (probably), was she a better kisser (definitely since she’s the one who gave me my first couple of lessons, yeah Logan was pretty excited about that story)? Did he wish it was her instead of me? The only thing I was sure of was that I was the better girlfriend. I never cheated on him, I never broke up with him because I was bored, or dangle my other relationships in his face, I never made out with him to piss off my parents (I did do a few things that Lilly never did such as accuse him of murder and rape, accuse his father of murder, break up with him because I was worried about him).

But it was pretty rare that I doubted he wanted me. Even when I got back together with Duncan I could tell the reason Logan was so surly was because he was jealous (I detested Kendall for much the same reason—though I like to think I hid it better, even if mostly just from myself). 

And then there was Madison Sinclair. I had finally gotten past the ghost of Lilly in our relationship and I had to start competing against real, live girls. The girls who liked to party and have fun and flirt with Logan and of course Madison Sinclair, the queen of the ilk. Because she had actually had him. She’d had Logan when he had broken up with me. Once I knew that all those thoughts about Lilly came flooding back with Madison in her place. 

I couldn’t be mad at Lily, she was my best friend and she had Logan first and she was gone. I’d wished she was there to hate me and ice me out for having him—even though she didn’t want him. I would have been grateful for that, as good as she was at punishing people.

That same could not be said for the Queen of Bitchy Resting Face.

It wasn’t long before seeing De and Matt together became Dwelling on Madison Sinclair Time. 

In that respect having sex with Matt De La Cruz was one of the worst decisions of my life.

I don’t think another one night stand could end up quite as badly but you can bet your rear I was not about to go and test that theory.


End file.
